Pension reform: “The arguments against 49.3 are very strong”, judge Bayrou

The arguments against a government action at 49.3which would allow the adoption of the pension reform without a vote in the National Assembly by the end of next week“are very strong”, judged François Bayrou on Sunday.

“In the situation where we are, where the text has not been adopted by a vote in the National Assembly, I recognize that the arguments against 49.3 are very strong”, affirmed the boss of the MoDem, an allied party of the majority, in the Grand Jury show RTL/Le Figaro/LCI.

Asked about the words of Laurent Berger, the leader of the CFDT, who said he feared that public anger does not turn into violenceif the President of the Republic did not take into account the mobilization of employees, saturday again, the High Commissioner for Planning found them “perhaps a little excessive” but he did not deny them. “In the current state of the adoption of this reform, the Prime Minister has reasons to choose another path,” he judges.

“Making each parliamentarian face up to his responsibilities”

“Yes, there is little margin” to gather a majority in the Assembly in favor of the reform. “That’s why going to an upvote would suck,” he continued. “It’s not playing Russian roulette” as the boss of the senators LR Bruno Retailleau feared it“it means placing each parliamentarian before his or her responsibilities”.

The president of the Democratic Movement regretted a new time that the executive has “not given the French the true situation, the real elements of judgment of the pension schemes”. “We have constantly taken up a hypothetical figure, of ten, dozen, fifteen billion that should be added to pensions. The reality before which we should all be appalled is that already today, the State is obliged to provide between 30 and 40 billion euros every year to compensate for the deficits of the retirement. (…) It means that we are no longer in the distribution, which only covers two thirds of current needs”.

“This public money, if we had it, it could be discussed, he continued. But the scandal, and if I could I would shout it, is that this money we do not have it, we borrow it every year, ”he hammered. Even adding, a little later, that “no one can contradict what I have just told you and no one can say that our level of debt is acceptable”. “We have to go to the end, he insisted. Those who accept this necessity are courageous”.

Asked about the end of inadmissibility of the Élysée brought to the unions at their request to be received by President Emmanuel Macron, François Bayrou replied ironically that he was “not President of the Republic… for the moment”. But “our social democracy is not going well and the place that should be given to representatives of employees and the self-employed, of companies (…) is not going at all”, he judged.